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Kansas City, Mo.-based nonprofit selected to manage project

By Sam Lounsberry

Staff Writer

Posted:
11/03/2018 12:32:36 PM MDT

Updated:
11/03/2018 02:17:54 PM MDT

A group of community stakeholders, including Kevin Mulshine of HMS Development, from left; Leion Bartholomay, VFW Post 2601 quartermaster; and Longmont City Councilmember Bonnie Finley, are helping bring a tiny home village for veterans experiencing homelessness to the city. The village will offer the veterans free housing while they get back on their feet. (Lewis Geyer / Staff Photographer)

Free housing for Longmont veterans experiencing homelessness — which addresses a goal set by city council earlier this year — is expected early next year.

Kansas City, Mo.-based nonprofit Veterans Community Project is leading an effort to bring and manage 25 tiny homes to two acres just south of Rogers Road and west of Hover Street.

That organization was selected by a group of city leaders and Boulder County nonprofits, including Habitat for Humanity of the St. Vrain Valley, Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2601, Longmont Foundation and the Boulder County Veterans Service Office, among others. Those stakeholders are collectively known as the Longmont Veterans' Housing coalition, which will help fundraise for the project.

The tiny home village will include 20 roughly 240-square-foot tiny homes, each of which will house an individual veteran, and five larger units of about 310 square feet for veterans with children, said Kevin Mulshine, a partner of HMS Development, the business that is donating the land for the tiny home village. Mulshine also is a member of the Longmont Veterans Housing Coalition.

The homes will be placed on concrete foundations, making the village's location permanent, unlike the tiny home village offering dwellings to homeless residents in Denver's RiNo neighborhood that is on the move after having its early success documented in a University of Denver study.

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Building the tiny homes will cost between $2 million and $3 million, Mulshine said.

When the tiny home village comes to fruition — backers of the project expect it to be completed by next summer — it will mark a step toward achieving a goal Longmont City Council set in January.

That was when council passed a resolution supporting the Mayors Challenge to End Veteran Homelessness initiative, which has been supported by 65 communities in 33 states since it was launched in 2014, according to the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness website.

"We're really excited about this," Councilwoman Bonnie Finley said about the tiny homes.

Chris Stout, the 37-year-old founder of Veterans Community Project and an Army veteran, was announced Thursday as one of 10 finalists for the CNN Hero of the Year for his work with the nonprofit, and if he receives the most votes at CNNHeroes.com by Dec. 4, the veterans organization will receive $100,000.

A crucial aspect of Veterans Community Project's vision is building and managing an on-site service center that will offer mentoring, counseling, case management and referrals to other city programs that can help the veterans — services that will be open to all veterans in the area who need them in addition to those living in the tiny homes.

"Tiny houses are just a fraction of what we do," Stout said.

While Veterans Community Project will be performing its own outreach to offer homeless veterans their services, existing homeless advocacy organizations in the county such as the OUR Center will also be able to refer them to the veterans nonprofit once its staff is on the ground in Longmont.

Veterans living in the tiny homes will have to comply with Veterans Community Project rules regarding participation in its support programs in order to continue receiving free housing.

"In contrast to traditional homeless services, a tiny home provides the veteran with privacy, a sense of security and the ability to reintegrate at a comfortable pace," the Veterans Community Project website says.

This village will give veterans a seamless opportunity to reintegrate because it will be adjacent to a neighborhood HMS is planning to develop. That neighborhood is planned to include about 350 homes on 64 acres to the tiny home village's east.

Mulshine said the professionalism and policies of the Veterans Community Project tiny home village in Kansas City, Mo., helped the Longmont veteran housing project overcome potential objections from HMS investors and prospective home buyers to locating a homeless community service next to the new neighborhood.

"We said we can't do it unless it's the perfect fit management-wise," Mulshine said.

He said his visit to the Veterans Community Project in Kansas City convinced him that the nonprofit was the right group to lead the project.

"It is managed so well, the service provider was so strong, that I said, 'I would live next door,'" Mulshine said.

Veterans Community Project will aim to help its Longmont tenants save up income from government benefits and their jobs so they can obtain housing of their own. Mulshine said the organization is able to get veterans into their own homes within six to eight months usually, but that timeline can vary in either direction.

The trend of tiny home living in general, and for homeless veterans specifically, has grown across the nation, and veteran service organizations are gauging the housing type's usefulness and efficacy for solving homelessness.

Veterans Community Project has plans to build veterans tiny home villages in St. Louis and Nashville, Tenn., after garnering positive feedback and results from its tiny home campus in Kansas City, Mo., and Mulshine said the nonprofit has received requests from hundreds of other cities for similar projects.

"We don't have any numbers on how many tiny home villages exist, but we have been hearing about them for several years and we expect that more communities will try them if it seems like an option that makes sense for the veterans experiencing homelessness in their area," said Randy Brown, spokesman for the nonprofit National Coalition for Homeless Veterans.

"Hopefully, the continued popularity of tiny homes will bring more information on how successful they are as a way to end veteran homelessness."

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